properly signifies a hollow intercepted between two knots, of the stalks or reeds of which the ancient shepherds used to make their pipes. It is now, however, generally used to signify the water-hemlock, and also the common root; but Linnaeus has described the latter under the old name of Conium. See that article.

There are three species of water-hemlock; the virofa, the bulbifera, and the maculata. Of these the first is the only one remarkable, and that for the poisonous qualities of its roots, which have been often known to destroy children who ate them for parsnips.

Cicuta is also used, chiefly among the ancients, for the juice or liquor expressed from the above plant, being the common poison wherewith the state criminals at Athens were put to death: Though some have suggested, that the poisonous draught to which the Athenians doomed their criminals was an infusion of the juice compounded of the juice of cicuta and some other corrosive herbs.

Socrates drank the cicuta.—Plato, in his dialogue on the immortality of the soul, observes, that, "The executioner advised Socrates not to talk, for fear of causing the cicuta to operate too slowly." M. Petit, in his Observationes Miscellaneae, remarks, that this advice was not given by the executioner out of humanity, but to save the cicuta; for he was only allowed so much poison per ann. which, if he exceeded, he was to furnish at his own expense. This construction is confirmed by a passage in Plutarch: the executioner who administered the cicuta to Phocion, not having enough, Phocion gave him money to buy more; observing by the way, "that it was odd enough, that at Athens a man must pay for everything, even for his own death."